It’s that time of year when we all gather ‘round the fire, sip hot cocoa, and discuss whether or not Love Actually is actually a good movie. Some of us despise it, some of us love it, and many of us haven’t even seen it—but however you feel about Richard Curtis’s holiday epic, there’s no denying its impact on popular…
“Artists thrive on turbulence & estrangement from Establishment/authority,” the writer Joyce Carol Oates tweeted earlier this month, “so [a Trump] presidency would not be a total disaster, for some.” It was a typical Oates sentiment, born of the kind of counterintuitive perspective that’s always had currency in the…
The New Yorker’s theater critic, Hilton Als, published a review of Beyoncé’s Formation album and tour this week titled “Beywatch.” “The truth is I wasn’t much interested in her,” he writes late in the piece, “until her sister, Solange Knowles, was caught on camera beating Jay Z’s ass in a hotel elevator in 2014.”
When people think about Salem, Massachusetts, they think about witches, and that’s fucked up, if you think about it. Looking back on the Salem Witch Trials of 1692-1693, in which 24 people were executed after being falsely accused of witchcraft, the town should be defined by its absence of witches. Lacking witches…
The brilliant fiction writer Claire Vaye Watkins has written an essay called “On Pandering,” a call to action against the stultifying effects of a literary system calibrated to the outsize, vulnerable egos of white men:
It pains me to say this, but—wait, no it doesn’t—it delights me to say this: Justin Bieber has released the three best singles of 2015, and there’s still time for him to release more. These aren’t mere flashes in the pan that we’ll forget once Adele and Rihanna drop 25 and Anti, respectively; they’re perfect, timeless…
Being a male millennial is totally fucked, because they keep taking away our rights. Today was the male millennial apocalypse because Pitchfork Media, the male millennial bible where I can find out about all my favorite rappers and bands, totally SOLD OUT to a major media conglomerate called Condé Nast, which is…
If you’ve already gorged yourself on Netflix’s new mega-popular original series Orange Is the New Black, you know why the show has been the darling of TV critics for the last several weeks — it offers something a little different from even the well-produced cable drama, a format dominated by Tony Soprano antihero…
The trailer for Fuck for Forest, a documentary about a group of environmentalists from Berlin who descend in naked whirlwind of public sex in the Amazonian rainforest, has been making the Internet rounds for quite a while. Somehow, a documentary about dreadlocked white European twenty-somethings creating eco-porn as…
After last Sunday’s painful Mad Men episode (and this whole season has really been a long, bitter exercise in chewing glass), the fragile mystique of Don Draper suffered a few more cracks. Don’s persona has been decaying ever since the first season, and if you’re especially cynical about the peculiarly American urge…
If you’re lagging behind in your Doctor Who viewing, you might not want to watch diminutive television critic Lindalee Rose’s review of “The Bells of Saint John” episode because, at a mere four years old, Lindalee has not yet learned the concept of SPOILER ALERT. It’s okay — she has plenty of time to hone her…
When you embark on an artistic career, or are a newbie in any field, you quickly cozy up to nearly constant criticism — or "constructive feedback", if you're lucky. You would never even dream of talking back to those critics, because you're less self-assured as an artist — you're learning the ropes, you're paying…
The licentious world of Amazon literary criticism may soon be much more tightly regulated, at least as far as nepotism is concerned. The New York Times reports that Amazon's criticism sentries are cracking down on the glowing book reviews obviously dashed off by an author's family member, friend, or sycophantic pet…
Brave television pioneers across the country, undeterred by reports of wooden acting and clunky dialogue, have been outfitting their conestoga wagon of a living room with Barefoot pinot noir and pizza flavored Combos (don't judge me) in anticipation of tonight's 9:00 pm premiere of Liz & Dick on Lifetime. Everyone's…
When you're in eighth grade and you don't understand why your best friend has suddenly teamed up with the class bully to write you jerky, unsigned notes that they leave in your locker every day (without fail) between fourth period science and fifth period study hall, having a mother who tells you that the girls are…
The results of our Millennial Survey are in, and it appears millennial folks did get a bit more praise growing up than crotchety Olds. Also, everyone thinks kids today suck — including kids.
Last week, we gave some tips on feeding your family over Thanksgiving. Today: advice on how to avoid killing them.
"What with the blood-like floor and the heaps of ash-coloured concrete intestines, these works were forcing me to think about bodies and new life, and even death," writes Isabella Welch of artist Anish Kapoor. Welch is 10 years old.
While this week's Time basically fawns all over Sarah Palin, others in the media discuss her hotness, her lack of education, and her gosh-darn boundary-breaking maverickness — and what these qualities will mean for her in 2012.
Of Nabokov's Russian version of Lolita, the New Republic, in 1968, noted: "Lolita herself...is one-and-one-half inches shorter in Russian." [The New Republic]
